Jonathan Eaker LIS 688C E-Journal Assignment   ����������� Journal Finder is a tool that allows a library to search all of their resources for a particular journal or any regularly published work. This would include any journal, newspaper, magazine and newsletters that the library has access through in print, electronically or even through other institutions. Journal Finder is a useful product that could help our patrons get to the information they need in a quicker, easier manner. ����������� What Journal Finder does is it allows the user to search for the publication they are looking for and to see all the different ways they can access it. So say a patron is looking for the New York Times. They search for it in Journal Finder and it will return a list of publications with �New�, �York�, and �Times� in the title. So that means they would get the standard New York Times (NYT) but also the NYT Book Review, NYT Film Reviews, NYT Magazine and several others. So if the user only wanted to see a book review or was actually looking for something in the NYT Magazine not the daily paper they would see the results and could pick the correct one. On this screen it shows if the source is available online, in print, for delivery, or at another institution.� This allows the user to pick from sources online if they want to use the resource from their home, but if they wish to see a print copy or have one delivered to them it tells if that is available and where and how to get it. They also can check if another institution has a copy of it if it is closer to them. ����������� So if the user did want the New York Times daily paper, and they wanted an online version, when they click on the link they are given a list of places where they can find the paper. So one source goes all the way back to 1851 but it does not have copies from 2002 to now. A person looking for historical items from the paper can search that one and know that it will have the paper they need. Several of the other sources offer more current papers, so the patron could look through those and see which offers the quality or search options they need to find what they are looking for. This keeps the user from hunting through all our various databases looking for the item they need and the issue they want. It�s all right there together on one screen. ����������� One thing Journal Finder isn�t intended for is searching for specific articles, it is just meant for journals and various publications. You can search for topics and maybe get some good sources back, like a search for �physics� will return all the major physics publications and some more obscure ones, but not everything out there. But the Journal Finder creators have also thought of that, and if you go to their advanced search option they have a list of subjects to which they have E-Journals for. The list covers over 40 topics and most areas of study. The only problem, if you can call it that, is that there are so many E-Journals available that each subject area contains hundreds of sources. ����������� We already have other databases and other ways to get many different journals and periodicals but Journal Finder helps the patron find it all in one place. Many of our patrons use NC LIVE to access documents and publications and it is a good place to go for that. The only disadvantage to just using NC LIVE is that not all the documents are full text, meaning the user may have to find a full text source elsewhere. That is where Journal Finder would come in and allow the person to find that publication with the article they are looking for. And not putting NC LIVE down, but it has a limited number of journals to search from and our library has access to many more if people just had a way to find them easily. ����������� Some of the other databases we have like Project MUSE and JSTOR offer a wide array of sources but they have their limits also. Project MUSE is limited to mainly social science topics. People who need math or science sources have to go elsewhere. Also, many of Project MUSE�s sources do not go back very many years and we have other sources that do go back further. A user who may have just turned to Project MUSE for specific title and didn�t find the issue they needed may give up when we had access to the one they needed by other means. Journal Finder allows them to see the dates that we have full text copies of every publication. JSTOR is another excellent resource but they don�t carry many issues from recent years, so things we keep in print in the library or through another database might not be found if they only turn to that one source. The biggest advantage Journal Finder gives us is that when the patron knows what it is they are looking for they don�t need to go one by one through all the databases, they can just do one search and have them all in front of them. ����������� I do think that it would be a good idea for us to purchase Journal Finder. It is a very valuable tool and could help our users a great deal. Since we are a community college in the state of North Carolina we would get a 50% decrease in the price which makes it very cost efficient for us. Another thing that Journal Finder does to help us as librarians is that it gives us reports to see how it is being used. It shows how many times different journals are searched for and searches which don�t return any results. Those failed searches may help the staff to know what we can do to improve searches and possibly which journals people want that we don�t have. Journal Finder is a tool our library could use to improve ease of access for our patrons.